impact of video screen on Wrigley Field

A lot has happened through the first three games at Wrigley in 2015. I attended the fourth home (April 14) game to take it all in and certainly the video board is the biggest story of them all.

Here’s a quick summary leading into the fourth home game:

new, giant video board in left field

right field bleachers are just steel girders as is right field scoreboard (The Ernie Banks tarps have been taken down)

left field bleachers are raw wood and concrete

the Cubs in first place and just won two dramatic games in a row

porta-potties scattered throughout the ballpark

VIDEO BOARD Where to start? Well, that giant video board simply demands itself to be first topic of any conversation. Obviously, it s big and bright. How it relates to everything else in the park demonstrates just how much attention it garners.

As of now, there’s four levels of visual hierarchy at the yard. And it may actually be only three.

1. playing field 2. left field video board 3. surrounding people 4. center field scoreboard

1. PLAYING FIELD As with any baseball stadium, the action on the field will always remain the clear focal point regardless of surrounding distractions. The field is big and in the middle of the stadium. Every seat is facing the field (for the most part). The field is flooded with light during night games. The crowd as a whole reacts continuously to on-field events guiding straying eyes back to the game.

3. SURROUNDING PEOPLE (formerly #2) The playing field and the surrounding people are intertwined in that everyone is united together in the event of going to a baseball game whether one watches the game itself or the people at the game.

Humanity abounds by the sheer volume of the game’s attendance. Squeeze 100 people in a room and there’s always something interesting to observe even if everyone is just sitting around. Do that with 30,000 people and a constant flow of new faces walking about with varying levels of alcohol consumption and you have a giant Petri dish of people doing what they do. There’s micro-levels within this group that’s best left for another discussion.